Mike Pesca
Mike Pesca first reached the airwaves as a 10-year-old caller to a New York Jets-themed radio show and has since been able to parlay his interests in sports coverage as a National Desk correspondent for NPR based in New York City.
Pesca enjoys training his microphone on anything that occurs at a track, arena, stadium, park, fronton, velodrome or air strip (i.e. the plane drag during the World's Strongest Man competition). He has reported from Los Angeles, Cleveland and Gary. He has also interviewed former Los Angeles Ram Cleveland Gary. Pesca is a panelist on the weekly Slate podcast "Hang up and Listen".
In 1997, Pesca began his work in radio as a producer at WNYC. He worked on the NPR and WNYC program On The Media. Later he became the New York correspondent for NPR's midday newsmagazine Day to Day, a job that has brought him to the campaign trail, political conventions, hurricane zones and the Manolo Blahnik shoe sale. Pesca was the first NPR reporter to have his own podcast, a weekly look at gambling cleverly titled "On Gambling with Mike Pesca."
Pesca, whose writing has appeared in Slate and The Washington Post, is the winner of two Edward R. Murrow awards for radio reporting and, in1993, was named Emory University Softball Official of the Year.
He lives in Manhattan with his wife Robin, sons Milo and Emmett and their dog Rumsfeld. A believer in full disclosure, Pesca rates his favorite teams as the Jets, Mets, St. Johns Red Storm and Knicks, teams he has covered fairly and without favor despite the fact that they have given him a combined one championship during his lifetime as a fully cognizant human.
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Ahead of Sunday's Super Bowl XLVIII, NPR's Mike Pesca dams up the river of hype to create a cool lagoon of Super Bowl reason. -
Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine and Frank Thomas are the Baseball Hall of Fame's newest inductees. Last year, baseball writers pointedly left some of the biggest stars off the list due to links with performance-enhancing drugs, and this year has been no different. Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens were again denied induction.
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The U.S. men's soccer team will face a tough road in next year's World Cup. They'll face Ghana, Portugal and Germany in the first round.
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Writer Nicholas Dawidoff spent a year living with the New York Jets and came away with a respect for players and coaches that not all fans will like. NPR's Mike Pesca says Dawidoff's new book, Collision Low Crossers: A Year Inside the Turbulent World of NFL Football, demystifies the game as it entrances. -
The play Fetch Clay, Make Man explores the sense of identity through the eyes of two significant figures in black history — Stepin Fetchit (Lincoln Perry) and Cassius Clay (Muhammad Ali). -
By the standard of normal golfing mortals, Tiger Woods has had an incredible summer. He's won multiple tournaments and millions of dollars in prize money. What he didn't do was win any of golf's four major championships. And those major wins are his measure of success. -
It's Christmas for pro basketball fans — game 7 of the NBA Finals is Thursday night. And, after an epic, draining game 6, the match up between the Miami Heat and the San Antonio Spurs has put everyone, from casual observers and the stats geeks, in a tizzy.
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Go on, pick a favorite in this year's NCAA tournament. We dare you. There's more than a dozen legitimate contenders to pick from. And then there's all those potential Cinderella teams. Mike Pesca talks to Audie Cornish about the upcoming NCAA Men's College Basketball tournament, which is as wide open as it has even been.
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ESPN is parting ways with Hank Williams Jr. The network will no longer use his signature song "All My Rowdy Friends," to introduce Monday Night Football.
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The New Orleans Saints play the Indianapolis Colts on Sunday in the Super Bowl XLVI. Despite the hoopla surrounding the clash, the players say they remain focused on the game. Still, it's not easy for players to remain focused.
